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- Hey, everybody, happy Thursday.
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Now, today's question is a good one
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but before we jump into that,
are you new to my channel?
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Welcome.
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I am a licensed therapist
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talking about all things mental health
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and I release videos on
Mondays and on Thursdays
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so make sure you're subscribed
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and have those notifications turned on
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so that you don't miss out
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but let's jump into today's question
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and it is Kati, speaking of this,
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can you talk about
narcissistic abusive parents
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and how to cope?
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Now, I believe I found this question below
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on my Three Types of Narcissists video.
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Before we really get into this question
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and how we can best cope,
there are a few things
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that I really wanna
discuss with you first.
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Number one, when we grow up
with a narcissistic parent,
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what we struggle with
most is emotional neglect.
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This happens most commonly
when a parent is a narcissist
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because they always put their own needs
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ahead of their child's.
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Remember, narcissism
is when we demonstrate
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a pattern of grandiosity,
need for admiration
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and have a lack of empathy.
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So having a child isn't something
that we can emotionally do
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or at least not healthfully
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and if we need a lot of admiration
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and have to feel important,
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being a parent to a baby and a child
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couldn't be farther from that.
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Even from my very limited
experience as a nanny
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and watching my friends have children,
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it's obvious to me that being a parent
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is one of the most humbling
experiences of your life.
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Children cry frequently.
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They need most of the
attention, care and affection.
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They truly cannot survive on
their own without their parent
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and therefore they're
gonna need us all the time
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to feed them, change them and
also love and care for them.
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If we grew up with a
parent who is narcissistic,
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this could mean that they
weren't able to do anything
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more than keep us alive.
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Forget the cuddles, forget the
patience when we were upset
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or even them trying to figure out
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what was causing us to cry.
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If anybody's ever watched
a baby when they're crying,
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you're like what do you want, need?
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I bathed you, I fed you, I changed you.
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You're trying to figure it out.
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So they probably didn't do much of that.
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If a narcissistic parent becomes
embarrassed by their child
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which happens all the time
'cause kids cry in public,
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they might throw things in public,
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they might try to take their clothes off.
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You don't even know.
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Children are unpredictable
but as a result,
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a narcissistic parent could
lash out at their child
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or even at their spouse
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therefore this could mean that as a child
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you were possibly emotionally
or physically abused
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or at least neglected in many ways.
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Now, as far as treatment for this goes,
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if we're out of that situation
and we're trying to heal,
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we're trying to figure out
what we should do first,
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I would consider trauma
treatment to be your best option.
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While I do think therapy in
general could be really helpful
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because it's validating, supportive
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and can give you a safe
place to talk through
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all that happened while
you were growing up
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but I think being abused
or neglected in any way
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is a trauma obviously
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and working with someone
who specializes in that
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could speed things along for you
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because some of the things
that a regular therapist,
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not a trauma specialist would bring up
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might not be pertinent.
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You might need someone just
to jump right in with you
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and start challenging you in ways
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that maybe you don't even know you need
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in order to process things through
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and this could be like EMDR therapy.
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I have a video about that
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if you're curious what I'm talking about.
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I'll link it in the
description but these are just,
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there are a bunch of different
types of trauma treatment
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and finding someone who specializes
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could be really, really great.
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Next, depending on whether
the narcissistic parent
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was your mother or father,
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you may wanna consider
picking up one of these books,
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The Emotionally Absent Mother,
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I'll link to these in the description,
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and The Unavailable Father.
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These are great.
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You can see all of my tabs.
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Great books but regardless of who it was,
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something we will need
to do is to heal the hole
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they left in us as a child.
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When we don't get our emotional
needs met as a young child
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or a baby, we can begin
to not trust ourselves,
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not trust how we feel or
what we think we need.
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We can begin to believe
that we are making it all up
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or aren't important enough anyways.
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In most cases, having
a narcissistic parent
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means you were gaslit
for most of your life
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and when I talk about gaslighting,
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it means that you were
manipulated so often
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that you may not even
trust your own sanity
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or your own perception
of certain experiences
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or things you know happened,
you think maybe you made it up.
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Overall, whatever messages we internalize
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from this neglect and abuse,
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it's important now to do
our best to be a detective,
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again this detective, I
love being a detective,
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to figure out what's affecting us,
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what our triggers are and how we react.
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Being more mindful of all of
this can give us more evidence
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that can really help
lead us to our healing
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and my next tip is journaling
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or writing letters that we don't send.
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This is a great way to
express all we may be feeling
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or felt in the past and any anger or hurt
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that we may have stuffed
down for years and years.
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Any way to get those
feelings out of our head
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is really helpful as long
as it is safe to do so.
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That's why I said letters
that you don't send.
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So a lot of it's just ways
for you to express it.
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You can talk about it with your therapist,
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talk to friends about
it, anything like that
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as long as it's not being trapped in here
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and stuffed down there and
also if you still live at home
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with these narcissistic parents,
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please get out as soon as possible.
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I have an older video about this
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that's called Dealing With Toxic Parents.
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I'll link it in the description
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because you should really check it out
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and it could really help
if you're feeling stuck
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in this situation because
you still live with them
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and my next tip is remothering
or refathering ourselves.
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Whomever it was that wasn't there for us
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or abused or neglected us in any way,
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we're gonna have to heal from that.
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I believe that trauma therapy
or talk therapy in general
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can help with this but we'll
need to spend some time
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figuring out what messages
we wished we had received
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from that parent and find other ways
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to give it to ourselves.
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It could be caring for a wound
when we've hurt ourselves
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like if we tripped and
fallen and scraped our knee,
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we might want to care for
that ourselves and clean it up
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and put a bandage on it.
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It could also be taking care
of ourselves when we're sick
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or saying kind and loving things
to ourselves each morning.
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There's that positive self-talk.
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You knew I was gonna
sneak it in in some way
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but whatever it is and it
may be all of those things
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just FYI, it could be a
bunch of different things
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that you do to show love
and care for yourselves
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but make sure you give
yourself the time to do it
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and to heal because this
hurt didn't happen overnight
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so unfortunately it's not
gonna heal overnight either
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and I hope you found that helpful.
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I hear about these things all the time,
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those of us growing up
with narcissistic parents
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and how painful it can be
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so I hope that that just
offers a little bit of guidance
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on how you can begin that process
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but if you've been through this yourself,
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can you just leave us some
tips and tricks and tools
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and maybe resources that you know of
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because together we're
working towards a healthy mind
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and a healthy body and I
will see you next time, bye.